Organization

AIRPOLIFE consists of 11 partners:

1.   Universityof Copenhagen, Institute of Public Health
2.    University of Copenhagen, Department of Pharmacology
3.   National Institute of Occupational Health
4.   National Environmental Research Institute, Dept. of Atmospheric Environment
5.   National Environmental Research Institute, Dept. of Policy Analysis
6.   Instituteof Cancer Epidemiology, Danish Cancer Society
7.  Universityof Aarhus, Institute of Environmental and Occupational Medicine
8.   Danish Institute for Food and Veterinary Research
9.   The PET Centre, Rigshospitalet
10. Department of Clinical Biochemistry, Section for Molecular Genetics, Rigshospitalet
11.The COPSAC study, Gentofte Hospital

Program management - AIRPOLIFE

Steering committee

A program steering committee consisting of the program leader Steffen Loft (chairman), OleRaaschou-NielsenICE (epidemiology), Ole HertelNERIAE (air quality and exposure), Håkan WallinNIOH(animal models), Herman AutrupAU(biomarkers) nd Peter VinzenzUCIPH (coordination) will be established in order to

• develop a detailed plan for the implementation of the program
• evaluate the quality of performance of the research tasks
• monitor compliance with the plan
• maintain a central file with all relevant information
• prepare interim reports of the progress of the project
• prepare plenary meetings of all the project participants
• prepare the final report.

Each committee memberoversee research planning and progress within their allotted area. The committee will meet at regular intervals, at least four times a year.

The management structure and communication flow is illustrated in Fig.

The program leader will ensure a regular dissemination to other partners of all the relevant information and documents received. A project homepage will be established under Health Science Faculty, University of Copenhagen .

 

Program leader

Professor Steffen Loft is program leader and will

• have the overall administrative responsibility,
• deal with all administrative and financial matters concerning the coordination of the project, while partners are responsible for their own budgets.
• oversee the research activities described in the work packages, and will ensure the progression of the project according to the plan
• be the editor of the annual and final reports prepared for the commission.
• be responsible for the (final) decisions related to public information (including scientific publications).

Steffen Loft will receive4 man-month per year from the program for research coordination. The leadership is supported by Peter Vinzenz as coordinator, who is well experienced in coordination of major research program in within occupational health

 

Partner and principal investigators committee

1. University of Copenhagen , Institute of Public Health (UCIPH)
2. University of Copenhagen , Department of Pharmacology (UCDP)
3. National Institute of Occupational Health (NIOH)
4. National Environmental Research Institute, Dept. of Atmospheric Environment (NERIAE)
5. National Environmental Research Institute, Dept. of Policy Analysis (NERIPA)
6. Institute of Cancer Epidemiology, Danish Cancer Society (ICE)
7. University of Aarhus , Institute of Environmental and Occupational Medicine (AU)
8. Institute of Food Safety and Nutrition (IFN)
9. The PET Centre,Rigshospitalet (RHPET)
10. Department of Clinical Biochemistry, Section for Molecular Genetics,Rigshospitalet (RHMG)
11. The COPSAC study,Gentofte Hospital (COPSAC)

The PI’s from each work package and the group leader form each of the 11 partners meet at least twice per year to coordinate. Partners are

• Responsible for performing the research activities described in the work packages
• Preparation of progress reports
• Responsible for own budget
• Required to participate in project meetings

 

International Advisory Board.

An international advisory board consisting of Prof. PaulBorm, head of Department on Particle & Fibre Toxicology in the Medical Institute of Environmental Hygiene, Düsseldorg University (http://www.miu.uni-duesseldorf.de/mit/borm.htm)

Prof. PaoloVineis, Unit of Cancer Epidemiology of Hospital S. Giovanni and CPO-Piemonte (Center for Cancer Prevention),  Director of the Section of Epidemiology and Life Sciences, ISI Foundation, Torino, Italy

GerardHoek, Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences (IRAS), Utrecht University ,The Netherlands .

will

• support in developing a detailed plan for the implementation of the program
• evaluate the quality of performance of the research tasks

By annual meetings with the program members, progress reports and running communication with the Steering Committee.

 

Scientific forums

Information exchange and education of young researcher will be organized in 4 overlapping scientific forums. The forums are chaired key researchers with specificexpertice. Seminars with project, planning execution and literature updates will be organized at least four times per year.

 

Quality assurance:

This is an integral part of the project to ensure the reliability andextrapolability of the conclusions of the project for their use in risk assessment and management. All quantitative tests and analytical methods will be calibrated with certified materials or procedures, when available, and routinely checked for their accuracy using control samples or tests. All analytical determinations will be carried out in random series and blinded to avoid any analytical and pre-analytical bias. All new procedures introduced into the study will be validated in collaboration with other groups whenever possible. The steering committee should be informed about the validation procedures.

 

Description of the participating groups

 

University of Copenhagen , Institute of Public Health^UCIPH

Steffen Loft is head of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine,.Scientific staff: Ass.prof.s Lisbeth E. Knudsen, Peter Møller and Peter Vinzenz. Post.docs.: AnjaWellejus , MetteSørensen ; PhD students:Lotte Risom, Zorana Andersen, Helle Bak, Lousie Grave Larsen (coming). Master students: Pernille Andersen, Janne Kjærgaard. Guest researcher Patrice Ogabde. 4 laboratory technicians.

The department is worldly recognized for work in the fields of oxidative DNA damage, animal models,personal exposure and health effects of air pollution, biomarkers and dietary antioxidant intervention studies. Recent focus is on understanding mechanisms by means of biomarkers based on genomics and proteomics. Together with Thomas Scheike from the Department of Biostatistics the department is developing expertise in time-series analysis of health effects of air pollution. The laboratory is well equipped with HPLC, mass spectrometry, molecular biology facilities, including real-time PCR etc. Facilities for (transgenic) animal studies are excellent. In early 2005 the laboratory will move to completely new facilities with approximately 1500 m2 at the old Kommune Hospital , together with the Institute of Public Health to create a large centre of public health with a number of other relevant institutions. The department has chaired several large programs in relation to environment and health with participation of most of the institutions in AIRPOLIFE.Lisbeth Knudsen is head of FP5 European Network on Children’s Susceptibility and Exposure to EnvironmentalGenotoxicants (QLK4-CT-2002-02198)

 

University of Copenhagen,The cardiovascular laboratory, Department of Pharmacology^UCDP

Integrative cardiovascular pharmacology andpatophysiology with special interest within renal and pulmonal dysfunction in congestive heart failure. Additional projects within liver cirrhosis, acute renal failure including drug induced renal failure. In house technologies include a number of pathological animal models as rats with congestive heart failure, liver cirrhosis, acute renal failure, state of the art measurement of cardiac performance, systemic hemodynamics, alveolar clearance, renal hemodynamics and tubular function in vivo, western blotting, immunohistochemistry, intracellular signalling pathways including cAMP, PKA, PKC and NFκB pathway, receptor binding studies and hormone assays. Endothelial functions can be studied in vivo and ex vivo in myographs.

Thestaff is at the moment 3 senior scientist, 6 ph.d students/research fellows, a number of medical students and 4 laboratory technicians including one animal technician.   

 

National Institute of Occupational Health^NIOH

NIOH is an independent government research institute affiliated to the Ministry of Labour. AMI is obliged to strategic research in working environment research and to ensure coordination of Danish working environment research.NIOH's aim is surveillance of the international working environment research and the national and international working environment. In addition to the primary research and development-oriented activites, NIOH has an obligation to carry out research education and to supply Danish occupational health professionals with new research results.

The Cancer Research group consists of three senior scientists (Håkan Wallin, Ulla Vogel), three technicians and four Ph. D. students. We study the mechanisms of toxicity of air pollutants in animals and cellular systems. The research covers the influence of DNA repair on risk of cancer, DNA repair gene polymorphism and relation to cancer or to DNA repair ability, identification of DNA damaging agents and molecular-epidemiological studies in different industries and with focus on the general environment and lifestyle exposures. The group studies possible connections between exposures to DNA damaging agents and DNA damage or cancer.

 

National Environmental Research Institute^{NERIAE; NERIAP}

ATMI is the national focal point for operating and reporting monitoring networks for air quality in Denmark . ATMI acts as national reference centre for air quality for the European Environment Agency and the Danish Ministry of the Environment. ATMI has more than 25 years experience within air quality with a staff of about 70 people of which approximately half have academic background. The annual turn over for ATMI is about 35 million dkr, about half from external funding. The background air quality monitoring programme (BOP/NOVA) and the urban air quality monitoring programme (LMP) contains nationwide networks linked to modelling activities and fulfils the departments obligations for carrying out monitoring for the Ministry of the Environment in relation to EU directives and national action plans.

Air quality modelling is a strong expertise of ATMI and is based on a detailed knowledge about the governing physical and chemical processes in the atmosphere obtained from analyses of measurements from monitoring programs and field campaigns of air pollution.

Over the last decade a special focus ofATMI’s research has been on the assessment of human exposure to air pollution and various field and monitoring studies of fine and ultrafine particles mainly from traffic. This area will remain as a key point in ATMI’s research strategy for the coming 4 to 6 years. ATMI currently monitor fine and ultrafine particles within urban streets and in urban background (above roof level). Furthermore specific research studies have been dedicated to study the contribution from ambient outdoor particles (mainly from traffic) to pollution levels in the indoor environment. Other important studies concerns characterisation of the ambient and indoor particle pollution including analysis of the chemical composition in different size fractions.

Assessment of human exposure to air pollution is mainly based onATMI’s AirGIS system constructed within a Geographic Information System (GIS). AirGIS is based on digital maps and various register data and generates input data for calculations with ATMI’s well-known Operational Street Pollution model (OSPM) for air pollution in urban streets. AirGIS is currently being applied for assessment of human exposure to air pollution within several Danish historical and ongoing epidemiological studies.

 

Institute of Cancer Epidemiology^ICE

The institute of Cancer Epidemiology employs about 50 persons with various educational backgrounds (medical doctors and other scientific researchers, programmers, statisticians and secretaries) brought together under the auspices of the Danish Cancer Society in Copenhagen , Denmark and devoted to research in cancerepidemiology. The institute is organised into 6 research areas: “Environment and Cancer”; “Genetics and Medical Treatment”; “Diet, Cancer and Health” “Psychosocial Cancer Research”; “Virus, Hormones and Cancer”; and “Occupational Cancer”. The research activities receive support from biostatisticians, programmers and secretaries employed at the institute. The institute has all modern equipment and resources required for epidemiological research. Our institute is based on the solid traditions of the Danish Cancer Registry, initiated as early as 1942. In 1997, the cancer registration activity was moved to the National Board of Health, while epidemiological research into cancer maintained its base at the Danish Cancer Society. Here we have a long-standing tradition of cancer research based on information from the Danish Cancer Registry and a number of other unique Danish population-based registries. Today our main research areas are spanning widely with environmental pollution, diet, infections, hormones and medical treatment being some of the major exposures under study for relationships with different cancers and non-cancer health endpoints. Gene-environment interactions have received much attention the last years. In 2002, the institute had 55 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

The researchers at our institute have build up an extensive network of national and international collaborators. The AIRPOLIFE programme will benefit from established cooperation with Dr.Sjurdur F. Olsen (Danish National Birth Cohort and Danish Epidemiology Science Centre) and Dr. Anne Marie Nyboe Andersen (Danish National Birth Cohort, DNBC and Institute of Public Health , Copenhagen University ).

 

Aarhus University , Dept.of   Environmental and Occupational Medicine^AU

The Department of Environmental Medicine is part of the Faculty of Health Sciences. The department has a staff of 7 tenured scientists, 3-postdoctoral fellows and 4 Ph.D.-students . The main research activities are to study the effect of pollution present in either the indoor-, occupational or the general environment on human health and disease and to identify potential high risk groups who will develop an adverse health effect. One of the research focuses is biomarkers of exposure and susceptibility. The department has newly renovated laboratory facilities and is equipped with the instrumentations required for the proposed study. Herman Autrup is key researcher.

 

ThePET center, Rigshospitalet^RHPET:

The lung physiology research is carried out at section 4011, clinic for clinical physiology and nuclear medicine, Center of Diagnostics center, Rigshospitalet. Research is carried by chief physician Jann Mortensens lung group, consiting of  Ph.d students, clinical research fellows, technicians and nurses. .The research concern studies of radiolabelled aerosol deposition and clearance with focus on investigation of the mucociliar transport and the alveolar permeability with gamma camera technique and lung function examinations.

 

Department of Clinical Biochemistry, Section for Molecular Genetics^RHMG,Rigshospitalet

The scientific staff consists of: Chief Physicians AnneTybjærg-Hansen, MD, DMSc and Børge G Nordestgaard, MD, DMSc, seven post doc. fellows (Ruth Frikke-Schmidt, MD, Ph.D, Birgit Agerholm-Larsen, MSc, Ph.D., Rolf Værn Andersen, MSc, Ph.D., Marianne Benn, MD, Ph.D., Stig E. Bojesen, MD, Ph.D., Morten Dahl, MD, Ph.D., Amar A. Sethi, MD, Ph.D), one Ph.D. student (Klaus Juul), two coming Ph.D. students (Maria Stene, MSc, Christina Ellervik, MD), two medical students and six technicians.

Facilities: TwodHPLCs and a 48 capillary ABI 3730 Sequencer, numerous PCR machines and gel apparatus as well as various other equipment. For SNP and mutation genotyping we are using a variety of different DNA assays (RFLP, allelespecific amplification, Nanogen chip typing and ABI Taqman allelic discrimination system).

Expertise: We are well experienced in gene screening and high throughput SNP genotyping. During the last ten years we have focused on common amino acid changing and regulatorySNPs in approximately 30 major candidate genes involved in lipid metabolism, lung disease, hypertension, haemochromatosis, venous thromboembolism, cancer and dementia. This work has been very fruitful.

 

Child cohort: COPenhagen Studies on Asthma in Childhood ^COPSAC

COPSAC – is apediatric clinical research unit investigating the development of asthma and allergy from infancy through childhood with the overall aim to learn how to prevent these diseases. It is the overriding strategy to study the prevention of such disease development through epidemiological, clinical, cellular and molecular studies, while taking into account environmental and lifestyle factors. The unit runs the COPSAC cohort and the “DanishPediatric Asthma Centre”  part of the COPSAC clinical research unit. This centre is sponsored by the Danish government with the overriding aim to advance quality in management and clinical research in pediatric asthma. The clinical unit was fully refurbished with funding from the government in relation to the opening of this centre. The COPSAC clinical research unit now accommodates office and clinical research space for up to 15 staff in a dedicated unit of 300 sq m. The COPSAC centre forms the major Nordic effort on pediatric Asthma and Allergy research.

Site leader HansBisgaard, Professor of Pediatrics at the University Hospitals of Copenhagen , presently visiting professor for one year at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center , Denver , Colorado . Staff: DrLiselotte Brydensholt , Clinical Research Fellow; Dr Mette Hermansen, Clinical Research Fellow; Dr Lotte Loland, Clinical Research Fellow; Dr Birgitte Bojsen-Kjær, Clinical Research Fellow; Dr Anne Gammelgaard, MSc, Post Doctoral Research Fellow; Dr Malene Stage, MSc (biochemistry); Lena Vind, Research Technician; Marianne Andersen, Research Technician; Andreas Heltberg “scholarstipendiat”; KlausBønnelykke will be employed as Clinical Research Fellow for the conduct of the twin cohort study.

 

AIRPOLIFE PI’s and key researchers with contribution to program from project (by own means)